Novodevichy Cemetery

I’m back from Petersburg! We actually got back to Moscow three days ago… sorry I didn’t update sooner! I’ve come down with some sort of cold-like illness, so I’ve been doing some extra sleeping lately. This is going to be a short post and it’s not about Petersburg. But that post (with tons of pictures) will be up in a day or two.

Yesterday I went to a famous cemetery here in Moscow called Novodevichy. Some of the most famous Russians ever are buried there, including Chekhov, Bulgakov, Gogol, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and more. There’s a very cool cemetery in Buenos Aires that used to hold the title of Most Awesome Cemetery in my book, but Novodevichy has since taken its place. The thing that I like so much about it is that it’s basically a forest. Or at least as close to a forest as an urban cemetery could ever be. Many of the graves were topped with mounds of dirt with bright green grass and wildflowers. It was really beautiful. This cemetery (and it’s convent, but we didn’t go in there) isn’t in the city center, but it’s by no means on the outskirts. It’s located roughly halfway between my homestay and the university.

As you can see from these photos, winter in Moscow is long gone! The weather has been amazing lately. Unlike in Duluth, there seem to many more sunny than cloudy days here. I actually think this evening was the first time it clouded up since we returned from Petersburg. And it clouded up for a very summer-y reason, a thunderstorm.

Our class schedule has been a little funny lately. We had class today (Saturday) because it’s apparently an official work day. You see, Tuesday, May 1st, was Spring and Labor Day. In order to give Russians a full 4-day weekend, Monday as well as Tuesday were public holidays. So Saturday became a work day in place of Monday. At first I thought this was weird, but now I actually think it’s a great idea. And now more public holidays are coming up – we don’t have class this Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday because of Victory Day! I’m assuming this means we’ll have to go in to class next Saturday. So anyway, in the next few days I’ll publish my post about Petersburg. And sometime after Wednesday I’ll tell you all about Victory Day. I’m really excited – Victory Day is a huge holiday, bigger than Americans can really imagine. It’s celebrated on May 9th, which is the date the Germans surrendered to the Russians in 1945. In terms of American holidays, I suppose you could say Victory Day is like the 4th of July plus Veteran’s Day plus Memorial Day. But because it specifically celebrates the end of WWII, it’s very different in a way most Americans can’t imagine because the Russian and American experiences during the war were so different. The most obvious difference: 400,000 Americans died in the war, 1,700 of which were civilians; 26 million Russians died, 16 million of which were civilians – that’s almost two-thirds!!

One of the biggest parts of Victory Day is going to Victory Park. It’s pretty close to where I live, actually, and there’ll be lots of live music and celebrations, and veterans don their old uniforms and stroll around the park. Celebrations apparently aren’t restricted to only one day. Today on the metro I saw a man who I assume is a WWII vet – he looked like he was in his 90s and was wearing an old military uniform with lots of medals and ribbons. And on my walk home I passed some waiters on break at a nearby restaurant lighting giant sparklers.

I’m sure you’ll remember that a few posts back I was telling you about how big of a deal Easter is here. But Victory Day is way bigger. There are like 20 times as many banners and posters for Victory Day than there were for Easter. Here’s a photo of a cardboard cutout near the university I posed with today!